With the release of Mario Golf: Super Rush, the topic of Nintendo’s use of updates, or free DLC, has once more come up. With previous titles, such as Mario Tennis Aces and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nintendo has used free, semi-regular updates as a way to roll out additional content and encourage players to return to the game. Some people posit that this also allows them to release a feature-incomplete game at launch. 

While Nintendo is well known for having highly polished games, they are increasingly experimenting with this update model that borders on games as a service. It’s understandable for any game to receive patches to fix problems and address balance issues, but the idea of drip feeding content at a fixed price feels new, and there doesn’t seem to be a consensus among gamers or consumers. The argument seems to have some merit that if a game doesn’t seem worth your time or money on its release date then it shouldn’t be bought. If some choose to wait and see what updates get rolled out, that’s more than understandable. However, sometimes the buzz of a new game and the excitement of playing it with others at launch can lead one to ignore that instinct. Plus you can be comforted by the fact that updates are coming. But what are those updates? And when are they coming?

In the case of many Nintendo titles, the company may announce that updates are coming, but they often don’t explain much beyond that. With Mario Golf: Super Rush, Nintendo hasn’t announced any specifics beyond saying that there are updates coming and then showing off footage of a New Donk City course. We know we’ll get more stages and characters, and if you’ve played the Golf Adventure mode, you can make some good guesses about who we’ll get, but those are just guesses. Nintendo hasn’t offered any road map.

The same is true for the current state of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Many people have complained that Animal Crossing: New Horizons lacked a number of features at launch, and while a lot of those features were rolled out in the intervening year, it’s unclear now how much, if any, new content might come to the game in the future.

Mario Tennis Aces started with 16 playable characters and another 14 were added over time, along with additional modes. ARMS and Splatoon 2 had stages and characters and modes added after release. We can use these games to guess at what Nintendo might do, but again, it’s just conjecture.

Ultimately, no one is forcing you to buy a game at launch, and waiting for positive reviews and information about the updates is wholly understandable. Nintendo likes to be secretive, and while it’s difficult to complain about free updates coming to games, it can be useful to the consumer to know something about those plans. Ultimately, if enough potential players hold off on buying a title that’s focused on competitive multiplayer, or online modes, that can only hurt the game. One can speculate that Mario Tennis Aces might have had a longer sales tail and a larger player base if it had more content at launch, although we’ll never know.

What do you think about Nintendo’s recent use of relying on updates? Does the use of planned, unpaid DLC in the form of updates keep you excited about a game or does it make you want to wait until all of the updates are out? Do such practices make you skip a game entirely? Let us know in the comments below, or join the discussion on Discord!

Sources: Nintendo, Super Mario Wiki